Parts of southern Louisiana and Texas were inundated with rain Thursday and Friday, flooding homes and roadways and prompting high water rescues.

An observer near Covington in St. Tammany Parish reported 15.63 inches of rain late Thursday night, with more still coming down.

The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office rescued residents from flooded homes and vehicles. Some roads in the area were still closed Friday afternoon, and first responders were standing by as the waters continued to rise.

An earthquake with an initial magnitude of 6.4 hit Nevada on Friday morning, about 225 miles northwest of Las Vegas near the California border, the US Geological Survey says.

The quake occurred at 4:03 a.m. local time, the USGS says. It was 4.7 miles deep. At least four aftershocks were reported.It was about 35 miles west of the town of Tonopah, east of the Sierra Nevada range.

The earthquake was "widely felt," USGS spokesman Paul Laustsen told CNN."There have been almost 8,000 'Did you feel it' reports, with people logging into USGS to report it," Laustsen said.

Esmeralda County Sheriff's Deputy Jacob Stritenberger felt the main earthquake and it was the biggest one he's ever experienced, he said.Deputies are checking out reported damage on US 95."North- and southbound is undriveable around mile marker 89," Stritenberger said. "According to people who called it in, it's buckled really bad."

An earthquake with a revised magnitude of 6.5 hit a remote area of Nevada on Friday morning, about 225 miles northwest of Las Vegas and near the California border, the US Geological Survey says.

The quake, which was 4.7 miles deep, occurred at 4:03 a.m. local time, the USGS says.The revised ranking makes the quake the first large one since 1954, said Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory.

"As the third most seismic state in the nation, we kind of had a streak of not having big earthquakes for 66 years," Kent said.

"This was a magnitude 6.5, and it was certainly felt in the Reno-Tahoe area, and also throughout the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys in California," Kent said.

The USGS said in its aftershock forecast that there will be between 63 and 260 aftershocks with a magnitude of 3.0 or greater over the next seven days.

Typhoon Ambo (Vongfong) has left a trail of destruction in the central Philippines as it continues to hit other parts of the country, adding to the woes of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who had to be evacuated amid the coronavirus lockdown.

In Eastern Samar, where it made its first landfall on Thursday, the storm caused "unimaginable" damage to infrastructure, Governor Ben Evardone said on Friday.

Among the damaged facilities were schools that have been converted into COVID-19 quarantine centers.

Pictures shared by netizens showed roofless buildings, uprooted trees and toppled electric poles. Several major roads were blocked by floodwater and debris.

In a radio interview, Evardone said that many areas in the province were left without power and communication lines were down.

"As of now, the storm has subsided but electricity and communications lines are down in some of the towns. Even the radio facility of the province was destroyed," he said.

The Halema'uma'u crater on Kilauea, located in Hawaii, has been relatively quiet over the last year after a frenzy of activity in 2018, which all began with an explosive eruption of ash 30,000 feet into the air during May. But, since at least 2019, there has been a change that scientists believe could pose a potential danger to the Big Island. Water has started to collect in the caldera to form a lake.

A caldera is a large crater left behind in a volcano after an eruption. From 2010 until 2018, a lava lake had filled the caldera rather than water. That changed in May 2018 when the eruption caused the lava lake to drain, collapsing the caldera floor and causing a hole nearly as deep as the 1,776-foot One World Trade Center. The eruption also created a 459-foot cliff (140 meters) north of the crater.

About a year later, a helicopter pilot flying over the volcano noticed a mysterious green pool of water in the Halema'uma'u crater. A second report of the same findings from a helicopter passenger prompted USGS-Hawaiian Volcano Observatory researchers to survey the green pool of water.

An astronomer at the McDonald Observatory has discovered a planet with fantastic red and green ripples in its atmosphere. It looks a lot like Texas.

Stephen Hummel was walking across the famous University of Texas observatory grounds a couple hours after sunset on May 13th when he noticed the flash of lightning from a distant thunderstorm. "I saw a large column of sprites leaping into the sky and rushed to set up my camera," he says. Aiming southeast towards the city of Alpine, he recorded this movie:

Comment: There was a time when capturing a sprite on camera was rare. Now they occur daily and can be seen without special cameras...